


Inheritance

by vtn



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vtn/pseuds/vtn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Azula decides not to lie to her father about who killed the Avatar.  Instead, she'll try a much more efficient way to get what she wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inheritance

 Azula kneels before her father in the long, red room, the carpet rough against her knees.  Ozai is in his throne, and beyond the crackle of the flickering torches Azula can hear his foot tapping against the stone platform with impatience.

 

"Azula," he says.  
  
"Father," and then she nearly shakes with the pure certainty and gravity of it all, "The Avatar is dead.  I have killed him."

 

"You have done well, my daughter," he says, his voice smooth.  But Azula can hear the excitement behind it.  "Truly, you deserve to succeed me as Fire Lord."

 

Azula grins at this.  "But I'm not the firstborn," she says, allowing an edge of mocking to slip into her voice.  She already knows what Ozai will say, but she wants to hear it still, will never get tired of hearing it.

 

"Neither was I.  Come, Azula."  Azula rises and obediently walks to the throne.  Ozai gestures for her to sit down at its foot, and he takes her chin in his hand, looks straight into her eyes with his own ablaze.  "It is not the circumstances of one's birth that matters most, daughter.  It is the strength we show when the time comes to prove ourselves.  Your _brother_ "—he spits out the word—"failed to do so, and that is why he returns to us a beggar.  He was weak.  Not like you, Azula.  You have proven yourself stronger than I ever could have imagined."

 

Stronger than you can imagine still, she thinks.

 

"So it's decided," she says, her heart pounding.  "I'm going to be the next Fire Lord."

 

"It is decided.  Word of your victory in Ba Sing Se reached me before you came to my throne room.  But I never had any doubt."  Azula's grin grows wider as Ozai continues.  "The papers have been signed.  Until the day I leave the throne, you will sit by my right hand and learn from me.  You will observe everything I do, and when the time comes, you will be ready."

 

Azula stands, then.

 

"I am ready."

 

Ozai sighs.  "Even someone of your great power must learn the subtle art of kings.  Until the time comes, you will wait and learn."

 

"I have nothing to learn from you," says Azula, "because I'll never be a king.  Because I am no prince.  And I'll be queen.

 

"I know everything I could possibly need to know.  You saw it for yourself.  Where generations before me had failed, I've taken Ba Sing Se, and the Dai Li too.  I've even killed the Avatar.

 

"So I think that qualifies me, don't you?"  She bows to him, always looking up to catch his eye.  "Father, I challenge you to an Agni Kai.  You and me.  For the throne.  For what ought to be mine.  The time _has_ come."

 

"Azula, this is foolish," says Ozai, anger bleeding into his voice.  Azula stands tall now, hands on her hips.

  
"Father, would you really do that to me?  Would you refuse an Agni Kai?  I heard about what happens to people who do that.  They get _burned_."  She strokes the side of her face where her brother bears his ugly scar.  "And then they don't get to come back.  Except as beggars.  As men with no honor."

 

"How dare you question my honor!" Ozai shouts, standing, staring her down.  He raises his hand and lets out a blast of flame, which Azula easily dodges by leaning her head to the side.  How simple it is to fight people who let their emotions get in the way.

 

Azula glances at the torches on the wall, and breathes in the smoke-scented air.  She draws up the fire from inside herself—the fire of her ambitions—and sends a line of hot blue flame toward the throne.  Now Ozai leaps up from the platform and counters Azula's flame with his own red blast.

 

"Very nice."  Azula claps over her shoulder.  Then she strikes again, with a bolt of flame toward his shoulder.  It's so easy to find the energy within herself now.  Now that everything is so clear. 

 

Ozai counters Azula again, and draws some of the flame from the torches into a fireball.  Azula stares right into the flames, and ducks to the side again as the fireball races toward her.  She curls her fire into two balls in her hands, and moves them like whips at her sides, moving in closer toward Ozai and blocking his missiles. 

 

"Is that all you can do, father?  I expected more from the Fire Lord."  She snaps her fire whip at his boots, and though she misses, it is only narrowly.  "Actually, the way you fight reminds me a bit of Zuzu," she says, briefly snuffing one whip to hold her chin in her hand, as she bats off her father's flames with the other. 

 

"Then perhaps he has learned something.  Perhaps I have taught him not to be insolent," he barks, shooting off a circle of flame toward Azula.  She ducks, and then leaps back up to make sure it hasn't singed the top of her head. 

 

Azula circles her whips of fire around herself, spewing off tongues of flame toward her father.

 

"Insolent, father?  You think I don't know my place?  I know exactly where I belong.  On the throne."  She watches Ozai's rage build on his face.  "Are you going to stop me, or just mock me?  You haven't even tried to use lightning."

 

"Lightning!"  Ozai aims a fireball at her, and she blocks it with a well-timed whip, dancing back out of the way.  "I have no interest in killing you.  I'm only going to teach you your first lesson in being a king."

 

"You think you even could kill me, father?" Azula mocks.  She whips her flames out at him again, throwing them still closer before he can manage to block her attack.  "If you tried?"

 

"Easily," Ozai says, "But I won't bring you down, Azula.  Not after what I've done for you."

 

"What have you done for me, other than restrict me?" She grins, and dodges flames to come in behind him.  Ozai flips around and just barely defends himself.  "Other than keep me from what I want?"

 

"You fool!" he shouts, his face going livid.  "I gave _everything_ for you!"

 

"Oh?  Like what?"

 

" _Your mother's love_!" 

 

Azula feels herself flush, and she stumbles back a bit.

 

"Do you know why your mother hated you, Azula?  Do you really?"  He stares at her as the flames he pushes through the air toward her grow larger. 

 

"She envied me," Azula says, with a shrug, trying to remain calm.  "Because I wasn't weak, like she was."

 

"No!" Ozai shouts, stabbing at the air with white-hot flames.  "Do you know what I did to make sure I had my perfect heir?  After I saw how useless your brother Zuko was?  I knew he was not fit to be the Fire Lord.  I knew from the moment he was born, small and weak."

 

As Ozai continues, he shoots rings of flame at her, and Azula has to work harder to fend them off.  She's even starting to break a sweat now, to her annoyance.

 

"He was not fit to bear my father's name.  I knew there had to be another.  I dreamed of it every night, I thought about it in every waking moment.  How I wanted a second child, one to raise the _right_ way.  Your _mother_ didn't see things my way."  Ozai's eyes narrow, as he draws in the smoldering air through his nostrils. "She was content with her son, and his birth had been a trial.  She was not ready to risk herself to bear another.  The fool.  I pleaded with her for _years_ , Azula. We fought day and night.  I knew I could not make myself face Ursa in an Agni Kai, because I knew I would kill her."

 

Azula snorts.  "No shit."

 

"So I faced her in another way.  I took her bending from her, tied her hand and foot.  If she would not bear me a child willingly, she would do it at my will."

 

Azula's eyes widen at this. 

 

"I forced myself on her for you, Azula.  I made her take me, again and again, until I was sure.  Until she was raw and hurt, and dripping with my seed.  She screamed for help, but I gagged her.  I couldn't stand to listen to it."  His hands clench into fists.  "I made her fear me.  I made her hate me!  But sure enough, she bore me my second child.  My true heir."  Ozai just smiles now, but his smile is not steady, and his hands are still tightly clenched, fire burning around them.

 

"You learned what I learned," says Azula, her voice shaking only the smallest bit.  "You learned that fear is the only way to rule over others, and make them do as you please.  I can't believe it took you so long."

 

"I can see we are forged in the same fires," Ozai says, but his voice is trembling more than hers.  And what is that?—she can't believe it—tears are forming at the corners of his eyes.  Water.  The weakest element.  The one that claims victory over fire, when in truth fire could turn water into steam and disperse it away into the air.

 

"I don't think so."  Azula is calm now, and she smiles again.  "I think you still regret what you did.  I think you still love her.  I think you couldn't let her go.  Not even," she leans in close, "for me."

 

Ozai's hands sparkle with lightning.  But he doesn't shoot her just yet, only blocks her blows with the sparking fire.

 

"And what does that mean, for me," Azula continues.  "I can't believe it.  You would put your own needs aside for someone who wasn't even born yet?"  She spits on the ground.  "You're pathetic."

 

And then he fires, pushing the lightning out from his fists, and at the same time Azula pulls her knife from her sleeve and drives it into his side.  As his face twists into an expression of agony and horror, the lightning wraps itself around the metal and crackles through Ozai's skin, not harming Azula from where she holds the grounded handle of the knife, though she can feel its awesome power shaking and burning her father's body.  Ozai is forced to the ground, twitching as the last throes of the electricity snap around him. 

 

She withdraws her knife from his side, and blood seeps from the wound.  She looks over her father's body, his skin burnt red from head to toe and breaking out in angry welts.  Ozai's hair and clothing has been burned from his body, leaving him bald and naked as a baby.  His face is hardly recognizable.  (Azula wonders what it was that made him leave her brother's face mostly intact.  Was it pride, so everyone would see the mark?  Or was it love?  Was it regret?) 

 

From his gash of a mouth, Ozai tries to speak.

 

Azula crosses her arms over her chest.  "What?"

 

"Agni Kai," Ozai rasps.  He coughs blood.  Azula giggles a little bit.  "A fire duel."

 

"Why yes, that's right.  We did just duel.  And I defeated you."  Azula cocks her head to the side, smiling.

 

"A _fire_ duel," Ozai repeats again, his voice stronger.  "The only weapon of the Agni Kai is _fire_.  You have cheated our most ancient art, Azula."  He spits out her name.  "You have no honor."

 

And then he dies, and his fire goes out.

 

"Ha," says Azula, turning her face from the disgusting burnt corpse in front of her.  "Honor.  I never wanted it."

 

-AMS, 6/2/12

**Author's Note:**

> The one where Azula brings a knife to a gunfight.
> 
> This is part one of hopefully more. In which we will see what kind of a Fire Lord Azula turns out to be.


End file.
